Bluegrass Duo Nefesh Mountain Releases Song in Honor of Anne Frank’s 92nd Birthday

Husband-and-wife team Doni Zasloff and Eric Lindberg are the heart and soul of Nefesh Mountain. (Photo by Lawrence Rickford, courtesy of JTA)

If anyone can pull off a bluegrass tune about Holocaust diarist Anne Frank, it’s Nefesh Mountain.

The New Jersey-based husband-and-wife duo — which appeared at a virtual concert last August hosted by Pikesville’s Har Sinai-Oheb Shalom Congregation — has been a standard-bearer of Jewish bluegrass (“Jewgrass,” if you will) for years. The group has appeared in Rolling Stone and numerous national bluegrass magazines. They’ve worked with some of the world’s most respected bluegrass session players (Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush, Bryan Sutton) while putting a decidedly Americana spin on such Jewish prayers as “Mi Chamocha” and “Modeh Ani,” and released other songs that tap into Jewish traditions.

“What we’re doing is not goofy at all, it’s very soulful and very honest,” singer Doni Zasloff told JTA in 2017.

Now, JTA is debuting “Piece of the Sun,” a track from their upcoming third album, “Songs For the Sparrows,” which comes out on June11, the day before what would have been Anne Frank’s 92nd birthday.

In the song, Zasloff recalls an episode from years ago when her young daughter, who was about 3 at the time, said during a car ride that “everyone in the world has a piece of the sun inside of them.” Zaslow and her husband, Eric Lindberg — who sings backup vocals in addition to playing the main guitar parts on the record — were stunned.

“While of course it was ridiculously cute, there was also something profound in what she was trying to say,” Zasloff said. “When Eric and I started to write this song, we very quickly found our way to the inspirational Anne Frank, who against all odds was able to see this beautiful light in all people.”

The song correlates Frank’s optimistic observations to their daughter’s comment, and ultimately urges their daughter to look for lessons in the famous Holocaust diary on her own.

“When I was young and lost at sea/Your grandma gave this book to me,” Zasloff sings. “It’s all in here but I can’t explain/Why history has so much pain./But just as every new day comes/So does our flame, our piece of the sun.”

The entire album is a response to the wave of emotions experienced by Zasloff and Lindberg after returning from a “roots trip” to Poland and Ukraine, where they visited many of the towns and cities their ancestors came from. The pilgrimage happened just two months before the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, which left them numb with sorrow.

Anne Frank
Anne Frank (Flickr Commons)

“We stayed home with our family and talked about what was going on with our kids, but in truth we really couldn’t process all that much at the time,” Zasloff said. But then they wrote a song for the victims.

“It was the next morning that Eric woke up and began playing these very somber melodies and broken chords on the banjo, and we both knew what and who this song was for,” she said. “We wrote ‘Tree Of Life’ that day for the communities in Pittsburgh, with only the hopes that it might relieve their pain, if only for a few seconds. Strangely enough, though, it seemed to take on a life of its own, and before we knew it hundreds of communities were singing ‘Tree Of Life’ for their own memorials, vigils and services that very next weekend.”

So why did Nefesh Mountain, which formed in 2015, decide to title the new album, “Songs For the Sparrows”?

“[The] sparrow is a bird that lives all over the world, on every continent. For us, these little birds symbolize the small but mighty voices that have been discriminated against throughout the ages,” Lindberg said. “These songs on the album are for them, for the lives that were lost in the Holocaust, for the voices silenced, for anyone facing hate, anti-Semitism, racism, sexism.”

Gabe Friedman writes for the JTA global Jewish news source.

You May Also Like
Everyman Theatre to Present ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
Everyman Midsummer

This spring, Everyman Theatre will bring director and Associate Artistic Director Noah Himmelstein’s unique vision for Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" to the stage in a contemporary production that's full of surprises.

Mother-and-Daughter Artist Team Exhibited at Gordon Center’s Meyerhoff Art Gallery
Margy Feigelson and Laura Kellam

On display through May 1, “It’s All Relative: Dual Impressions of Nature" features the works of Margy Feigelson and Laura Kellam.

Birthright Participants Find Visiting Israel During Wartime a Unique Experience
Birthright Israel

Birthright Israel packs an emotional wallop for those participating in the aftermath of Oct. 7th.

Hiring People With Disabilities is a Win-Win for Everyone
woman at desk

People with disabilities bring the same assets and qualities to a job as any other perspective employee, writes Stanley Stith of Jewish Community Services.